This posting is, more or less, a continuation and expansion of “Out of the Mouths of Babes…” dated Aug 19, 2009. You might want to reread it first. For the sake of gender equity, I’ve used a photo of an angry white man.
Eddie Chiles, the now deceased iconic Texas oil man and onetime owner of the Texas Rangers, didn’t say it first, but he excited public attention by a series of radio ads that were introduced by his signature line, “I’m Eddie Chiles. and I’m mad as hell”. Ultimately there arose a public response from some of the great unwashed in the form of bumper stickers that read, “I’m mad too, Eddie”. It was never clear to me exactly what everyone was mad about, but I got a pretty good idea from other of his rhetoric which complained of “wild government spending”, “runaway regulation”, and even “tyrannical bureaucracy”. Sound familiar? He even threw in that his political opponent for congress, Jim Wright was an “unrepentant socialist”. As I recall, Congressman Wright was known for two things. He was one of the only southern congressmen to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and for the so called Wright Amendment which limited duration of flights out of Love Field. As far as I can tell, neither of these exactly qualified him as a socialist, although I hated the restrictions on Love Field flights that he thrust upon us. Chiles behavior, in the whole, is as good an example of the use of political anger that we come across, although, certainly, there are many others.
BTW, you probably won’t be surprised to find that the idea of anger as a mobilizing (political and otherwise) force, didn’t originate with Eddie. There are some who say that he borrowed it from Howard Beale who borrowed it from god knows who. You remember Howard. He was the newscaster in the often cited film, Network. Howard was being slowly driven crazy and ultimately to his death by network executives who were using him to achieve higher and higher ratings (kind of like votes, don’t you see), and which ultimately drove him to his infamous diatribe on the fictional six o’clock news which began, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more”. Howard soon threatens to kill himself on air as a form of revenge, but then in a rapid turnabout, apologizes to his audience by explaining that “I just ran out of bullsh*t”. He is ultimately done in (killed) by studio execs presumably; for low ratings.
Back to Eddie for a moment. Like so many other politicians, Eddie had at least two sides of his face from which he could talk. In spite of his rants against profligate government spending, his company, The Western Company, accepted over $100 million in federal loan guarantees for off shore drilling rigs he wanted to build and deducted his “I’m mad as hell” ad campaign as a business expense. Let the government pay for what they’re doing to me sort of thing.
I’ve found two definitions of (political) anger that I offer as a way of casting light on the subject. Anger is:
1. A wild emotion that endangers both social order and the possibility of constructive political discourse. This is from Peter Lyman, a social and political theorist, in his article The Use and Abuse of Anger in Politics.
2. An emotion derived from one’s perception of having been offended or wronged coupled with a desire to undo that wrong through retaliation. This is from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, as amended by me.
In my reading on the subject, I’ve found much intellectual and much not so intellectual support for the notion that anger is not only a legitimate tool in politics, it is actually essential to getting anything done. It has proven to be a terrific motivator of human behavior. After all, what else would motivate otherwise normal citizens to give their hard earned money to dubious candidates and cause them to turn out for staged political events, wear funny hats, wave obnoxious signs in front of people who care not one whit what they think, and put inflammatory bumper stickers on their cars. I get it.
There is a downside, however. First of all, anger is not sustainable over the long term. It’s good for short bursts, but you can’t maintain it at a high pitch for long. Remember Howard Dean’s roar in 2006. You just couldn’t get that going every day. Plus, at the heart of it, anger runs contrary to the fundamental American tendency to be optimistic about the future and the concomitant desire for happiness. It’s really hard to be angry, optimistic and happy all of a piece, at least for very long. Anger also frightens us. It opens the door to a sequence of events that is likely to end badly. One minute it’s insulting signs, the next it’s citizen militias acting as vigilantes, then finally it’s an angry nut case taking potshots at a judge or the president or me.
I think there’s a case to be made that anger is closely related to paranoia, it’s the handmaiden of fear, and a first cousin to hate. It certainly breeds the idea that, “they’re out to get me”. Every time I hear “they” in an angry indictment as in, “they’re not gonna take my (fill in the blank) from me”, I get the vague feeling that somehow I’m at fault. I’ve heard purveyors of political anger deride the patriotism of those who are on the other side of (pick your issue) even to suggesting that they are not “real” Americans. Chose your own epithet…socialist, nazi, liberal crazy, conservative retard. More likely though, what is meant by “they” is the federal government who ironically is a creation of the very people doing the indicting. And finally, anger divides rather than unites. I guess if the anger is externally directed to a common enemy of the United States (read Taliban or the Japanese just after Pearl Harbor here), it would be a uniting force, but when directed towards our fellow citizens, it has the potential to create the kind of we/they environment which carried to it’s illogical extreme, will be detrimental to our happiness….which is exactly the one thing we can all agree that we all want.
I’d like to propose a possible solution to these problems created by political anger. Let’s adopt the English parliamentary notion of The Loyal Opposition and apply it to those in disagreement with the idea at issue. In the parliamentary system, the term is applied to the party not in power and acknowledges that they can oppose (even fervently) the policies of the party in power, and can do so while maintaining loyalty to the source of the government’s power. I think we would do well to concede that those with ideas different from our own are not the enemy to be feared and even hated, but merely well intended voices seeking to be heard. You can disagree with me on matters of the political moment and still have my respect. The price is that you have to be civil with me….and I with you. I have to respect not just your right to disagree, but that you have good intentions in doing so. After all, we will all be The Loyal Opposition at some point.
Or maybe it’s simpler. All of this political anger….maybe, as the old bard said, is merely “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing”. I hope so.
